Average-Case Analysis

Abstract

Worst-case performance analysis is one method of characterizing the effectiveness of a heuristic. It provides a guarantee on the maximum relative difference between the solution generated by the heuristic and the optimal solution for any possible problem instance, even those that are not likely to appear in practice. Thus, a heuristic that works well in practice may have a weak worst-case performance, if, for example, it provides very bad solutions for one (or more) pathological instance(s).